


No Vakarian Without Shepard

by CreepyReapers



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Reaper War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 08:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8364514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreepyReapers/pseuds/CreepyReapers
Summary: Shepard is dead after the fight with the Reapers. Archangel is handed a human child who looks strikingly familiar. Post ME3 ending/ angst. Remembering Shepard.





	

“A Thresher Maw?!”  
Garrus had nearly fallen asleep over his work desk which was riddled with numerous datapads and reports for Palaven’s defense systems when he heard the cry come out from the darkness behind him. He turned in his haste, heart still pounding from the sudden burst of adrenaline as his eyes met two orbs of green that reflected the blue of a datapad that stung his eyes. “Evelyn, what’re you doing up so late? You’ve got academy train- I mean, school tomorrow.” he had adjusted enough to that blue haze to see her dull teeth exposed in a brilliant smile, eyes sparking with excitement. 

“You and mom stopped a Thresher Maw?” She repeated again, ignoring Garrus’ question completely as her tiny hands gripped the datapad so tightly he thought it might crack. She’d somehow managed to get a hold of Jane’s Legacy- the data pad Liara had given to him when they’d decommissioned the Normandy.Commander Jane Shepard had died in the final onslaught against the Reapers, saving them all. And although Garrus had always thought that victory meant all the same even with one soldier still standing, he felt as if he’d lost everything that day. After he’d drank his fair share of Turian Whiskey to dull the pain he’d laid in bed for hours listening to Shepard’s voice as it tinned out of the datapad’s speakers. If it hadn’t been for Evelyn, Spirits knows where he’d be right now. He watched his daughter silently with steady calculation, contemplating everything that had happened the past 11 years.

Evelyn was not his blood, no lab test required for that one. She had been grown, cloned from what little remnants of Shepard they could recover after the battle with the Reapers. Garrus had stormed right to the Council when he’d caught wind of their little experiment- his mandibles flared and body tense with anger. The Council wanted to replicate the perfect commander and train her the way they deemed fit. When asked who would care for the girl, he’d been told she’d spend her life in an Alliance hospital on Earth, fed dinner through tiny slits in the wall and brainwashed to become a brilliant strategist and killing machine. Archangel wouldn’t have it, he couldn’t idly stand by as he watched them warp her into their sick sense of perfection.He bent the knee and pleaded for custody, at least with him there she wouldn’t be alone. They had handed her to him then, just a small ball of stale smelling hospital blankets as she stretched out her rosy pink arms towards him, watching him sleepily through emerald eyes.  
Now, 11 years later she stood before him. Since that day and every day thereafter he could see more of Jane in her. He would smile if it hadn’t hurt so damn much. Garrus doubted he would’ve made it another year after Shepard’s death. The team had been there for awhile to help ease the pain, but eventually they too had to return home. Often times his nights were hazy as he stared at the bottom of a liquor bottle , passing out in his tiny apartment on Palaven, only to be woken up by his sister who’d come by to check on him.

“What happened to her… to mom?” her tiny voice brought him back to the present, his head hanging low as he pulled himself out of his office chair and onto his knees in front of her.  
“She…she died, Evelyn.” He’d used the same line so often with her it became reflex, yet the words felt like fire each time they escaped his mouth “She died saving the Galaxy.”.  
“Dad , please.” She gave him those puppy dog eyes- as humans like to call it- that she had perfected, “Everywhere we go, I hear her name. I want to know who she is, Spirits- she even has a monument in the center of Alliance headquarters.” her face contorted slightly, contemplating her next words, placing her hand on Garrus’ shoulder, “I know she’s dead… and I know how much you love her.But I want to know who Jane Shepard was, not just what they tell us at school.”. Garrus watched her for a long time, his sub-harmonics whirling with uncertainty.  
Over her 11 years she’d gotten really good at reading his voice, “Dad please…don’t push me away.”

“Okay, okay.” He hummed softly, switching to a sitting position. Evelyn followed suit by sitting in front of him. He began with his days at C-Sec and how the system made his blood boil as he watched criminals walk free due to enforcement corruption and absurd loopholes. Especially Saren, the Turian Spectre that showed no mercy with a serious distaste for any race outside his own. He had been hot on the Spectre’s trail when he’d first met Commander Jane Shepard and eagerly joined her crew for a chance to take Saren down. Evelyn learned about most of the Sovereign attack on the Citadel timeline from school, so he skipped over the tinier (and bloodier) details from the battle. He told her about Jane dying the first time, before Cerberus brought her back. The two years he spent in agony wasting away on Omega, trying to make whatever was left of his life count for something. He figured out then that he had loved her, much more than the Commander/Soldier dynamic had allowed him to.  
“She DIED?” Evelyn gaped, somewhere in between his ramblings she’d grabbed her stuffed animal Varren and had been clinging to it in anticipation, deserting Shepard’s data pad on the floor.

He let out a chuckle, finding humor in her reaction, “She was definitely a stubborn woman. Almost reminds me of someone…” he peered at her through his visor and Evelyn stuck her tongue out at him, warranting a hearty laugh from Garrus.  
He’d continued with a detailed description of his fight on Omega as Archangel, hands forming a gun as he recanted taking mercs out in waves like it was only yesterday. It was his favorite story to tell, one he hadn’t told in a very long time. His animated gestures along with the trill rising in his voice made Evelyn’s eyes light up like fireworks.

“That look, that’s the exact same look your mother gave me when I saw her again.”  
For half a minute it felt like Shepard was alive again, that she’d walk right through the front door and join in and help Garrus tell their story. The reality that had slipped away slowly washed back over him as he returned to a much more sedated storyteller.  
Ironic that his favorite story was shortly followed by a near death experience- a common occurrence for the Normandy crew. The notorious missile that might’ve been the death of Archangel had it not been for Shepard. He remembered lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, smelling her faint perfume mixed with the tang of his plasma as she desperately held on to him and called for evac. The next few days had been a bitch as he struggled to move his mandibles or eat. Joker took it upon himself to try to make Garrus laugh out of pure spite it seemed. He left out the fact he’d kept the scars because Jane thought the they made him look ruggedly handsome. Even now he couldn’t bare to part with them. They’d became a part of who he was. He breezed through the majority of their missions, mentioning Sidonis but skipping out the fact that Shepard had let him take the shot as revenge against the traitor. Not one his prouder moments, but even the calm and collected Garrus would snap if bent far enough.  
“So when did you tell mom you loved her?” Evelyn finally blurted out, a little disappointed her father had painted more action than romance into the picture.

He thought back and realized he never vocalized it until the end. He’d shown it often times through his hand brushing her waist as she cleaned her armor after a mission or his arms wrapped around her when she couldn’t find solace in her dreams. Garrus wish he had, though. Wish he’d told her every chance he had, as if it would’ve made a difference– she was gone and no amount of words would’ve kept her there with him.

“The last time I saw her…” His voice rumbled low with pain ,”I was injured and she called for evac. I should’ve gone with her. I had hoped if I told her then that she’d make it back. I shouldn’t have let her go into that damn beam alone.” He averted his eyes to the floor trying to push the rising despair from his voice, looking strong for his little girl.

“Spirits, I miss her Evelyn…” his sub vocals wailed with uncontrolled sadness as he fell to pieces, imagining Jane’s hand on his scarred face before being gone forever.  
There was a soft rustling before Garrus felt her little hands hold on to his, “I know you do… I see it in you everyday. But you keep moving along. Anyone else would’ve thrown in the towel by now. But not you. You can’t leave me, Dad. I need you.”  
Although she’d tried to help it only made him ache more. She wasn’t his, she was smart enough to know that by now. One day she’d work up the confidence to ask him how she came to be. Should he lie and say she was Alenko’s? Anything seemed a better alternative then telling her she was a replica, a shadow of the former great Commander. One of the Council’s sick little jokes.

“I’m not your dad,” he said flatly.

A boisterous laugh escaped the 11-year-olds lips making Garrus jump by sheer volume alone. She smiled even as he stared at her in shock.  
“I’m 11, not stupid,” she sat up on her knees and wrapped her arms around his cowl, “You’re always going to be dad to me, blood or not.”  
He wrapped his arms around her, hands shaking. Evelyn knew exactly what to say, as if she’d been waiting years to say it. Damn her for being so smart, “I’m not leaving you, Spirits help me I don’t think anything can keep me away from you.”  
She squeezed him tighter before pushing away and meeting his eyes with hers, a tentative smile across her face.

“Good, ‘cause I wouldn’t let you leave even if you tried,“ her little hand tugged at one of his mandibles, a gesture she use to do quite often when she was younger, “Archangel, huh? That sounds like a maid service on Omega.”  
It started then, the laughter came deep from within and he let it consume his body as it came out in unrelenting waves. He hadn’t laughed this hard in years and he felt his side twist in sweet agony from over exertion. The look on Evelyn’s face only aided his feverish laughter, surely she would think he’d snapped.

He fell back on an elbow with his head propped up breathing in deeply, Evelyn hitting his knee with her stuffed Varren, “What the heck was that about?”  
“You remind me of Uncle James sometimes. We should’ve called you Lola.” he snickered as Evelyn crossed her arms and scrunched her little nose.  
We- there it was again, as if Jane were just in the next room again. Evelyn had been Jane’s idea for a girls name. One night after a mission they’d thrown off their bullet-ridden armor and taken a hot shower to simply lay in her bed on the Normandy staring out into the galaxy. She was most beautiful during those times, the fire in her eyes as she watched the stars stretch out before her-a true adventurer. They’d talk about adopting a few Krogan at first until Shepard had suggested the name and he’d joked Wrex would hardly approve of it. She’d nuzzled up to him then, laying in the crook of his arm with her breath hot against his neck sending shockwaves down his spine and proposed they adopt a Turian or human instead. He pulled her close and promised after the war they’d begin the adoption process. She would be proud to see the father he turned out to be.

Evelyn had her knees tucked under her chin, finding interest in Jane’s data pad once again, swiping through various pictures and audio from recruitment posters to alliance interviews. Garrus watched her quietly, examining her. She was his life and he- her fierce protector. Evelyn had a way of sensing things, knowing when he’d have bad days before he even said a word. She’d grab his hand in the middle of the street without pause as angry onlookers would whisper to each other. Amazing that in a galaxy so big people were still so small minded. He’d failed Jane and no amount of reassurance would ever make him think otherwise, but he wouldn’t fail another Shepard. He would watch her grow up, help her train and hopefully one day give his blessings to a lucky man. And this time he’d be the one to go alone into the darkness to find Jane sitting at the bar with a beer in hand, waiting for him.

Jane was dead. He’d fought with himself for over 11 years with her loss. And in that time of mourning Garrus had been too blind to see his daughter succeed, depriving her of the life her mother had given to him. Hiding those moments instead of sharing them. He did a damn good job in raising her, even for a Turian, but he’d made Jane into some type of taboo. It was time to let go and enjoy his years left, maybe even join in on a few missions when Evelyn was old enough. Like hell if he’d die in some hospital bed of old age.

Evelyn cozied up next to Garrus, his hand gently mussing her hair as she scrolled through photos.  
She let out a strangled yawn and he hummed in response, “Maybe you ought to go to bed.”.

She jerked her head in protest but was clearly too tired to utter a word. Yep, just like Jane, he thought. Her fingers still managed to swipe through pictures as her eyes began to flutter and head began to lull until she had fallen fast asleep. He chuckled softly and gently removed the data pad, flipping through a few photos himself. The first was one was Jane’s Alliance recruitment photo, followed by a few taken on the battlefield. Suddenly in all the militaristic content he skimmed through sat a photo he hadn’t seen in a long time. The whole Normandy crew sitting on a sofa in Anderson’s apartment posing for their last picture. His mandibles flared into a smile just remembering their times in that place, where for just one night they were simply friends enjoying a party. The pain didn’t seem quite so unbearable anymore. He exported the photo to his omni-tool before setting the data pad onto his chair and slowly snaked his way out of Evelyn’s grasp, heading for the kitchen.   
After hitting a few keys on his omni-tool a very tired yet commanding voice called out, “Yes, Primarch?”  
“Evelyn won’t be coming in for training tomorrow-er later today. Looks like she may have a bit of a cold.”  
“Remember the protocol, Vakarian. Need I remind you that is the third violation of your custody agreement with the Council?”  
“I am well aware, thank you Admiral.”  
“Very well.” the transmission ended with one foul blip from the omni-tool.  
Garrus let out a sigh of relief. He returned to his snoring daughter, graciously picking her up off the floor, “How about we visit the Citadel tomorrow, hmm?” he said in a whisper that rumbled deep in his chest. To his surprise she stirred just long enough to smile at him and nod.


End file.
